Chaplains earn the ‘atten-shun’ of Deeny Riback campers

by Johanna Ginsberg
NJJN Staff Writer

Is it fun to be in the army? Do you like being a soldier? Why do we have wars? Have you ever driven a tank? What does a war look like? Is it hard to get a minyan?

Campers wanted the answers to these and other questions on a soggy Friday morning in Flanders when two chaplains, Col. Ira Kronenberg and Col. Jacob Goldstein, came to visit JCC MetroWest Camp Deeny Riback on July 8.

The two, who are among the 29 Jews serving in the 2,850-member chaplaincy corps, spoke about their experiences running Passover seders in the middle of a war and serving in countries all over the world, leaving many campers thunderstruck by the idea of a rabbi in battle fatigues.

The event was organized by Rabbi Richard Kirsch, director of Jewish programming at the camp.

While Kronenberg spends much of his time stateside — either stationed as an Army chaplain at Fort Dix or working at Daughters of Miriam Center-The Gallen Institute, a nursing home in Clifton — during Passover he was in Kabul conducting seders.
He described the experience of landing at a base that had been bombed three days earlier, of driving around in an armored vehicle, and of having a 22-year-old carrying an M16 rifle and a machine gun protect him. And he described the sad things he saw, like children in a hospital who had been injured by stepping on land mines; and peculiar religious experiences, like facing west instead of east to pray, since Jerusalem is west of Afghanistan.

Goldstein shared stories about his service, which has taken him to, among other places, Iraq, Grenada, Qatar, Kuwait, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, Israel, and Ground Zero in Manhattan, where he served rescue workers as the chief chaplain of the New York Army National Guard.

Goldstein spoke of sleeping in one of Saddam Hussein’s palaces in Iraq and seeing a golden throne there. “He was an interesting guy. He liked things for himself, but not for his people. He starved the population of his country.”

When he was stationed in Bosnia in 2000, Goldstein said, he managed to have a lulav and etrog delivered to someone in Skopje, Macedonia. “A person should always lean forward to do a good deed,” he said.

And he described an interaction he had with a fighter pilot after conducting a Passover seder on a ship supporting the troops in Afghanistan. “I was invited onto an aircraft carrier to see how it flies. Can you imagine standing 30 feet from jet fighters coming and going, landing to refuel —and off they go again? I went on board, offered a prayer for travel.” He noticed the bomb that would be dropped on the enemy later that morning. “On the bomb was written in Hebrew letters, hag sameah, or happy holiday…. When the fighter pilot returned later that day, I asked, ‘How was it?’ He said, ‘We gave them a big headache.’”

Goldstein, a follower of the Chabad Lubavitch hasidic movement, also told the camp group that he is the only person in the military permitted to wear a beard because of his religious beliefs.

The youngest campers, going into first grade, had difficulty grasping some of what they heard; at one point one camper seemed to confuse “Gulf War” and “golf war” and asked, “Is that a kind of war when people knock balls at each other?”

Still, Goldstein was taken with this group of youngsters. “They ask the most interesting questions anyway,” he said

Twelve-year-old Avi Kleinman of Livingston was intrigued by the chaplains’ first-person tales. “The stories were really cool,” he told NJ Jewish News. Kleinman said he heard quite a bit about war from his father’s friends who have served in the military, but nothing like this. “The people I meet don’t talk about chaplains or faith in the army. I think it was unusual to learn about faith in the army.”

After a few more questions — Have you ever known anyone who died? Do you get paid to be in the army? Do you miss stuff at home while you’re away? — the campers dashed out of the pavilion and into the pouring rain to their next activity, and the chaplains sloshed through the mud, agreeing that in their line of work, they’ve gotten used to bad weather.

Johanna Ginsberg can be reached at jginsberg@njjewishnews.com.